It’s funny how NRI’s (non resident Indians) and whatever you call expatriate Pakistanis are often even more “traditional” than the people back home. I mean, there are arranged marriages in my family back home, too, but the girls are encouraged to get their educations first, and have a job even after marriage, even if it is a relatively low-stress job like interior decorator. But here, the parents feel like they are losing touch with their culture and so push their kids even harder.
I was a big nine days’s wonder when I rejected arranged marriage and insisted on the man I am still with, fifteen years later, but a few years after all of that hubbub, a friend of mine married a black man and then divorced him three years later. You would think someone set fire to their panties, with the gossip!
I of course know what rishta is, my sister. Your second para alternately made me smile and brought tears to my eyes. My dad accepts my SO, and slowly, slowly, my family is accepting him - my dad came up this weekend, and my mother’s cousin, who he is staying with, sent two pronti (flatbreads) for me and two for him. This is the same woman who pushed my other half away from my mother’s cremation casket, even though Dad had asked him to stand close by. Things are changing but so slowly.
My family in India all know about him and no longer push rishta on me. I’m not sure how that happened! Fifteen years together certainly helps of course.
But mom? Mom will never be able to change now, and we’ll never have a chance to fix it.
